As part of my year of recovery in the fight against Cancer, I’ve been taking time to mentor pro-bono a group of first-time software (game) devs on Agile Methodologies, and Holy Toyota! What an adventure down and up, left to right it has been across the Kanban board!
You know that moment when a dev fresh out of the “educational conveyor belt” encounters their first sprint planning? That deer-in-headlights look when you suggest breaking down their weeks-long, coffee-fueled behemoth of a task into story points?
Let’s be honest, we all do, we hated it and the blood pressure that came with it.
My mentees, like many young developers these days have brilliant minds. Minds that come pre-loaded with the classic workflow of: “Problem! Solve it! Problem! Solve it! Bug! Fix it! Wait, why are we behind?” Then they hit the Agile wall and their brains practically blue-screen.
And it’s not their fault. It wasn’t any of our faults when we were in their shoes at that stage in our career. Some of us were lucky to take actual product or project classes at College/University. Most people were not.
As an Agile Mentor (Not a coach, different thing) my real joy comes from that “Lightbulb On” moment. When suddenly, for these mentee’s it was around sprint 3, when the realization those regular standups weren’t just torture devices. They were more than “this could have been an Email” meetings” that I conjured up from the bowels of my coffee machine to make them wake up early. It’s when they discover that breaking work into manageable, mobile, supportable chunks means fewer insomnia inducing coding marathon fueled by energy drinks and far less existential dread that comes from potentially shipping an unfinished build.
I’m going to be honest though, I’m no Agile Whisperer as LinkedIn Buzzwordy as that sounds. The transition for my mentees has been rough. There have been growing pains split between struggling to adapt the way think, how they’ve “always done things” (Meaning how they did in school), or when they are let down that they can’t just go off on a feature creep inducing tangent. As a mentor, I’m there to support them through these patches.
This means I’ve seen actual physical pain on these young developers’ faces when they realize their elegant, perfect solution must be sacrificed at the altar of MVP. All those pretty Lamborghini level features cut down to a Honda Civic so the product can just ship. Functional and on time. That moment when they grasp that “done” doesn’t mean “perfect.” It means “meets the acceptance criteria and doesn’t explode when touched,” and it also means “done is often just another world for version 1.0, let’s look at the roadmap for version 1.1”
Mentoring is always rewarding, have I mentioned that enough? Watching formerly chaotic code monkeys transform into grandiose Agile gorillas? When they start volunteering to be Scrum Master. When they enthusiastically grab their markers for retrospective sessions. When they actually defend velocity metrics to newcomers.
When they correct me?
That’s when I smile, handover the Roadmap and say. “Showtime!”
What’s your favorite Agile learning story, one where you got to pass it on?
Writer’s Note: First real blog post!